BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- When Lauren Banks tells other same-sex couples about getting
married, she tells them that the ceremony is important. It's important for
couples who love each other to make that bond official, if only among friends
and family.

"I always tell them that it doesn't matter if it's legal or
not, as far as the celebration and the commitment are concerned," she says.
"It's important to stand in front of your community and have that recognized."

Banks, who is the director of policy and advocacy at AIDS
Alabama, married her partner of four years a year and a half ago in Florida,
and for the two of them, it was meaningful.

"We had dresses and a reception and the whole nine yards,"
she says.

But when Banks sits down to do her taxes, she's still
single, at least in the eyes of the law. When she buys car insurance, she and
her partner don't qualify for the discounts her parents get. When they bought a
home in Crestwood, Banks put the house only in her name.

For the most part, the debate over same-sex marriage has
centered on the question of morality, but for same sex-couples there's a lot
more at stake than whether the state approves of their decisions. The legal minutia that married couples often
take for granted crops up in the life of same-sex couples every day.

That might be changing soon. As states throughout the
country have legalized same-sex marriage and civil unions, the rights conferred
there do not travel across state lines because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage
Act. However, many expect the United States Supreme Court to strike that
federal law down this summer, a decision which could shift the momentum in the
fight for marriage rights in the favor of same-sex couples.

But in the meantime, same-sex couples have to deal with the
laws they have while they wait for the laws they prefer.

"There is such a thing as heterosexual privilege, just like
there is white privilege or male privilege," she says. "There are those things
that most people don't think about."

While Banks and her partner have had the ceremony of getting
married, they have just begun to deal with the legal issues involved. They have
been certified by her partner's insurance as an eligible couple, and they have
a joint checking account. They put each other down as emergency medical
contacts, but if one of them ends up incapacitated in the hospital, there's
still the question of who makes the health care decisions.

The next step, she says, if for them to define their powers
of attorney so that they can deal with those issues, but getting those
contracts done can be expensive and it can be hard to find an attorney with the
experience putting those together for same-sex couples.

Hostile laws

When it comes to same-sex marriage, the law in Alabama is
not ambivalent. It is decidedly against it, and it is reinforced by years of
redundant legislation and case law.

And that, says Judith Crittenden, is not likely to change
any time soon, but there are things that same-sex couples can do to protect
their rights, both when getting married and when those marriages end.

Crittenden, a Birmingham-based family law attorney, says she
first began reading about same-sex cohabitation contracts about 10 years ago,
and has dealt with several of them since then. Crittenden is probably best
known as one of the Birmingham's premier divorce attorneys, but she says
marriage can be as much about keeping a couple together during trying times as
it about love and fuzzy feelings.

"It as much to reinforce the bond between each other and
make that bond more permanent," she says. "Sometimes when you are married, you
have moments when you think, wow, if I could just walk out, I would."

Nothing can keep a same-sex couple from having a ceremony,
but without contractual protections under the law, same sex-couples are exposed
to legal risks and deprived of rights that heterosexual couples don't have to
think about.

"They need to know about all these things," she says. "They
need to know about the kinds of documents that they need to have, and it is not
widely known."

Property rights are a big concern, not just in case of a
break-up, but also if one of the partners dies. Disposition of assets is an
important thing to handle on the front end of a relationship. Estate lawyers
can help, Crittenden says, but couples should make sure that they find a lawyer
with experience with same-sex issues.

Probably more emotionally trying are health care and
end-of-life concerns. Unless couples have taken care of things ahead of time,
they can set themselves up for disasters if one partner suddenly becomes
hospitalized or incapacitated.

"No matter how many years you've been together, if your
partner is in the ICU, you may not be able to visit them," she says. "And where
there are antagonistic family members of the partner who is hospitalized, they
may enjoy asserting that against this guy or woman they never approved of."

One of the documents that a same-sex couple can generate is a
document giving HIPAA rights to partners, giving visitation rights to partners
and the power to decide end-of-life issues.

"You could have been living with this person for many years
and you don't know your family that well, but they are the ones that get to make
that decision without that," she says.

Jessica Kirk Drennan, a family law attorney in Birmingham,
says that it's crucial that same-sex couples not wait until relationships turn
sour or a partner to become ill before addressing these issues.

"It's the same thing that happens to heterosexual couples
who don't have pre-nuptial agreements, because no one wants to think about the
dissolution of a relationship at the beginning when you are so happy and in the
throes of the honeymoon phase," she says. "In my experience, most same-sex
partners don't do that, and they don't go and spend the money on a lawyer during
the blissful period of 'Hey, we're married and it's the beginning of our
relationship.'"

DOMA up or down

However, there are limits to what the existing law can offer
to same-sex couples through contracts.

First among those to Banks is child custody. Banks says she
would like to have a child, and when she does, she would like to share custody
with her partner.

"Second-parent adoption is my number one issue," Banks says.
"I will be the birth mother, but when the birth certificate comes, then I want
her name to be there as well as mine."

Alabama law is all but hostile to same-sex couples setting
custody through adoption, and in one Alabama Supreme Court decision, Chief
Justice Roy Moore equated the homosexuality of a parent to child abuse.

The gay marriage issue is not just about couples, Drennan
says. It is about the children those couples have, either through giving birth
or through adoption.

"We have a whole section of society living out there in
Alabama, whether people want to admit it or not, that do not have the
protection of our laws, and that includes their children," Drennan says. "Only
one of them can adopt the child, so if they ever break-up in the future, that
child can be taken from a person they have known as a parent, and maybe never
see them again."

In addition to custody issues, same-sex couples also have
problems with retirement benefits and tax issues that cannot be resolved
through contracts. However, that might change soon, depending on a ruling by
the U.S. Supreme Court expected later this summer.

In 1996, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act,
commonly referred to as DOMA. That law prohibits federal marriage benefits for
same-sex couples and says that states cannot be compelled to recognize same-sex
marriage from other states.

Before that law, states did not have as much ability to set
definitions for marriage.

"When I graduated from law school, the rule was that a
marriage, valid where celebrated, was valid in every state," Crittenden says. "DOMA
changed that and said no state can be required to accept a marriage that that
state regards as being against public policy. That completely reversed
centuries of law."

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal from a case
originating in New York that challenged DOMA. In that case, the plaintiff's
wife died, leaving the plaintiff with more than $360,000 of estate taxes she
would not have to pay if they had been a straight couple.

Questions in that hearing from some of the court's more
conservative judges have led many legal observers to predict the court could
likely strike DOMA down when it rules this summer. Crittenden agrees.

And if that happened?

"We would go back to the old rule that is valid where
celebrated is valid everywhere," Crittenden says.

Of course, more conservative states would likely resist, and
many of the legal issues for same-sex couples would have to be litigated.
Alabama would likely challenge any same-sex cases based on the full faith a
credit clause of the U.S. Constitution, but the odds would be on the side of
the couples, rather than the state, she says.

"I think Alabama would lose on that issue," she said. "Now,
would it have smooth-sailing? It would depend on the judges on the courts that
were hearing that issue."

Nonetheless, Crittenden says she would encourage same-sex
couples considering marriage to go to other states now and get married where it
is legal. If and when DOMA is struck down by the courts, those couples would at
least have rights to federal benefits, such as Social Security and tax status.

But in the meantime, prepared for that day or not, those
couples will have to wait and dream.